Designed in partnership with the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation in Lisbon, this exhibition explores Robert and Sonia Delaunay's ties of friendship and art with Amadeo de Souza-Cardoso (1887-1918), a Portuguese painter who moved to Paris in 1906. After meeting in 1911, the three artists saw each other regularly. On the eve of the First World War, their pictorial research converged on the abstract study of light and colour and the exploration of the connections between painting and poetry.

Caught out by the start of the war in 1914 when he was in Portugal for family reasons, Souza-Cardoso did not return to France. The Delaunays joined him in the summer of 1915 after Robert was discharged from the French army. The couple moved into a luxurious villa next to the sea in Vila do Conde, a small town in the north of Portugal, where they lived for nearly a year. They often received their friend, who was based in Manhufe to the east of Porto. The three artists shared an interest in traditional crafts and reintroduced figurative elements into their work.

Souza-Cardoso died during the Spanish flu epidemic in 1918. The study of his exchanges with the Delaunays blurs the boundaries established between

North and South and centre and periphery, revealing an artistic panorama that is far more complex and interconnected. Divided into two symmetrical sections, the exhibition presents works by all three artists, from the start of their careers to the end of the war, and reveals their shared concerns as well as their differences.

Wolfgang Tillemans à la BPI du centre Pompidou